


Full

by artemis_fay



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:00:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25468936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemis_fay/pseuds/artemis_fay
Summary: Betty Draper Francis has never been satisfied, so in a bout of unhappiness she turns to something she thought she no longer needed: food (how Betty gained weight between seasons four and five)
Kudos: 4





	Full

Betty Francis fought with her husband the whole way home. 

The disagreement had started over something silly. They always did. He forgot to tell her the milk was empty, or he didn’t pay attention to something she said, or he came home later than he said he would. 

Then, Betty would look at him and for a moment, a brief, horrifying, moment, she would see Don. It would pass, but the memory would still be there— her first husband’s smug features pulled tight over the face of the second one. The one was supposed to be better, to be perfect, to love her unconditionally and give her everything she wanted. The problem was, Betty had no idea what she wanted. She only knew it wasn’t this.

That night they were returning from a dinner party. Betty both loved and hated these events. On one hand, they were aching reminders of her previous marriage, of when Don would order her out of the dusty closet that was her stifling suburban home to dangle from his arm and impress everyone on his behalf. 

On the other, they were the chance to be admired. Betty couldn’t help but love the process of getting ready, of exploring her expanding closet and selecting the perfect dress, of watching herself in the mirror as she fixed her hair and put on makeup. She loved the awe-filled look Henry gave her when she swept down the stairs, heels clicking against the floor of her new, larger house in perfect rhythm. She loved the compliments everyone gave her, even the unwilling ones, the barely suppressed gazes that lingered on her, the jealous whispers that flooded her wake. Especially those. 

She would have rather enjoyed this particular evening if Henry hadn’t ruined it. The waiter had just brought out dessert (of which, of course, Betty would eat precisely three bites before pronouncing herself full) when he dropped the bomb on her, when nonchalantly talking to another man. 

“Of course, we have to move again—” 

A loud clink resounded through the room as Betty let her fork fall onto her plate. 

“Excuse me?” 

The worst part wasn’t how unprepared she was for this, or how her husband had mentioned this huge decision to a friend before he mentioned it to her, or even the awkward silence that filled the table afterward. It was look in Henry’s eyes when he met her gaze. She knew that look, she had seen it countless times on Don’s face. It was the look of poorly covered guilt. 

That look was also why, even though Henry had insisted that he hadn’t kept it from her, that he had surely mentioned it before, she knew he was lying. She had been manipulated, and that made her furious. This marriage was supposed to be different, and if it wasn’t, she would make it different, she would meld it to her will with all the power she had. 

So, as Betty stepped into her new, brightly-lit kitchen, the kitchen she and Henry had argued and debated and compromised over, as she listened to the fight leave her husband’s voice, she laid out the final blow, the one way she could make at least some of this decision hers. 

“I want to decide where we live,” she said coldly. 

“What?”

“You heard me,” she continued. “I want to pick our next house. No disagreements, no compromises. I want it to be my choice.” 

Henry took a step away from her. She felt a rush of icy pleasure at the perplexed look on his face. 

“Of course,” he replied hurriedly. “If that’s what you want. If that makes you happy.” 

That night, Betty lay awake and listened to his words ring through her ears over and over. If that makes you happy. She was glad he had given in to her— Don wouldn’t have. Don would have made her feel weak and small until she felt that she had to do what he said. But she wasn’t sure if this new agency would make her happy. It was better, though, she assured herself. Much better.

As she pondered her new life a strange desire possessed her. After hours of listening to Henry snore, a foreign, long-forgotten feeling gnawed at her stomach: hunger. After years of cigarettes, clothing, and magazines she thought she had trained herself to ward against this. She wasn’t supposed to feel this, to want this. But here it was. 

So what?

A new voice came with the feeling, cruel and calculating, and somehow perfect. So what if she was hungry? So what if she ate? It was just one night, after all, it wouldn’t change anything. She never did eat her three bites of dessert.

Before she could stop herself, she slid out of bed, down the stairs, into the kitchen. She opened the fridge slowly, the soft whirring filling her ears. The tile was cold on her bare feet, the electric light illuminating her face. 

She knew, to an extent, that she was standing at the edge of a precipice. That if she knew what was good for her she would turn around, close the fridge, and go back to bed. When she woke up tomorrow this strange urge would be gone, and everything would be back to normal. 

But somewhere— in bed, in the car, at the restaurant— the thread anchoring her restraint and self-control had been cut. What was the point of stopping herself? It wouldn’t change anything. There was nothing she could do. She was already falling.

Mechanically, her hands started reaching for things: handfuls of raisins, whipped cream, cake. She chewed so quickly she couldn’t taste what she was eating, the only sensation she was truly aware of was a desire for more. She wanted, needed more. And she needed it fast. Ironically, cruelly, the food didn’t seem to be satisfying her at all, in fact, the more she ate the hungrier she felt. It was as if years of denial were finally catching up to her, demanding all the calories she had ever turned away.

When she finally crept up to bed, not because she was full, but because her stomach was starting to ache, she promised herself this would be the only time. But promises could be broken— and Betty was very good at lying to herself. 

***

It took a few weeks for Henry to notice the missing food. 

Betty had really intended to stop after the first time, to reclaim her precious self-control, but whenever she reached for her old restraint she came up empty. Desperate, she started smoking more often, drinking cups and cups of coffee, walking around the block again and again so she wouldn’t have access to the kitchen. 

Nothing worked. Maybe it would be okay, maybe she could make peace with herself and stop, if it weren’t for the day Henry had figured out something was amiss. 

“What happened to the cereal boxes? I just bought a few more yesterday, and now they’re all empty.”

Betty was in the living room, reading a newspaper with a cigarette in one hand. She felt her heart stop as she registered the question. It would be easy enough to come up with an excuse— the kids were going through growth spurts, she needed it for a function, or he must have forgotten to buy them— but the fact that he noticed was unsettling. 

Her episodes had been a secret, private, something only she knew had about, and that made her feel that on some level they never really happened. They existed in a different world, a world where Betty wasn’t the beautiful, perfect housewife everyone had come to expect, not in the real world. Not in this world. But here was undeniable proof of her actions, of how her secret had altered their lives, if only slightly. 

***

She became less secretive after that. She discovered that instead of eating in big, dramatic spurts she could curb her hunger by eating constantly throughout the day. It felt more normal that way, even if she was ultimately consuming the same amount of food. 

She had begun to gain weight. Not a ton, just enough so that her dresses pressed ever so slightly against her waist, so that it was a little difficult to zip up her pants. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Could people see it? Could Henry? Did they care? Did he? 

In the morning she would stand in front of the mirror and examine herself, wondering why she was doing this, why she was giving up everything she had worked so hard to achieve. 

But what really scared her was that on some level, she didn’t care. She knew that she was supposed to be upset, to hate herself like this, but there was a cavernous space between what she wanted to feel and what she actually did. Everything was numb— she observed her weight gain objectively, noting every outfit she could no longer fit into as meticulously as if she was conducting a science experiment. 

Perhaps she was. She wanted to know how long it would take for people to comment on her physical changes. She was very familiar with being passive-aggressive, with biting sarcasm buried beneath layers of good manners and small talk. 

When those comments came, she took them all in with sadistic pleasure. Here was a new kind of control— the kind that came with knowing exactly what was going to happen before it did. Being thin gave her tangible power, an ability to persuade and captivate using nothing but her appearance. Gaining weight, however, was a different, exotic kind of power: she felt like she was so much smarter, so much wiser, than everyone around her. 

***

To her dismay, whatever satisfaction she once got from eating didn’t last. 

Soon, she could no longer fit into any of her old clothes. Desperate, she went to the department store in the city, grabbing a box of crackers as she dashed to the car. She ate them on the way there, and around the halfway point she realized that she couldn’t stop. She just couldn’t.

Physically, she was incapable of halting the process of reaching into the box, lifting a cracker, and putting it into her mouth. 

The realization terrified her. 

Everything she was supposed to feel but hadn’t before came flooding back, shame and panic overwhelming her until she could barely breathe. She was gaining weight. She was gaining weight rapidly, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to stop any time soon. 

When she finally reached the store she stumbled out of the car, breathing heavily. She made a beeline for her old size, grabbing the first dress she saw without deciding if she even liked it.

“Can I help you?” 

She whirled around to see a lady, uniform crisp and trim, hugging her slim figure, smiling with a look Betty recognized all too well. Contempt, pity— everything she used to feel for other people. Now that she was on the receiving end, she felt a longing to return to her position of power. She forced herself to calm down, to stand up straight and smile. 

“I need a dressing room for this,” she replied coolly. The lady’s eyes flitted from her body to the dress in her hand, and Betty knew exactly what she was thinking. She wondered if the lady would say anything. Fortunately, she didn’t. 

In the dressing room she let go of her forced calm, frantically tearing her clothes off and struggling to pull the dress on. It was so far from fitting she almost laughed. What was she thinking? 

“How is it going in there?” 

The smooth, slick voice drifted into the dressing room from the outside world, the world Betty had once belonged to, the world she had exited hastily without thinking of the consequences. Now, she wished she had. 

Slowly, Betty let the dress fall to the floor, not caring if the lady could see it under the door. She let herself stand, naked, in front of the full-length mirror, taking in how much she had changed. 

She was so dizzy the room felt like it was spinning. Standing before her in the mirror was not the perfect woman, the perfect housewife Betty had so fully committed to becoming. This woman wasn’t glamorous— she was average at best. This woman would never turn heads while walking down the street, would never be the envy of all her friends. No one would look at her in the way they once did, with desire and loathing and adoration.  
Tears welled up in her eyes. But somewhere, buried beneath the pain and sadness, beneath the knowledge that she had given up so much, she felt a glimmer of satisfaction. There was a kind of joy in self-destruction, in tearing down her carefully constructed image brick by brick. 

“Ma’am, are you alright?”

Betty smiled at the woman in the mirror, tossing the dress aside and pulling on her clothes. 

“Yes,” she said, holding back a dark laugh. “I’m perfectly fine.”


End file.
